Standard FPGA-based or Full FPGA-based Controllers for Electrical systems, two viable solutions

This paper presents a comparison between a standard FPGA-based controller and a full FPGA-based controller for electrical systems. The first controller uses a standard low cost FPGA such as Xilinx Spartan and the second one uses an Actel Fusion FPGA which integrates all the peripherals required for these kinds of applications. The purpose here, is to analyze in details the potential benefits offered by this last solution compared to the first one. To this purpose, a current control algorithm for AC drives has been implemented on both targets. This comparison concerns the design methodology (evaluation of the reusability of designs), the time/area performances and also the quality of the system control.